How many books people read
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i read 10/year, probably.
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Dude, we are in 21 century - flooded with information; who cares about amount of reading??? The real question is how much we think or how much you write. A. Jann.
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Could it be that some people are just too busy to read? Take me for example, I go to school, work full time, have a wife and two kids. Plus there's the house duties, family (extended) duties, and the social life. Doesn't leave that much time for reading? Then there's other interests? I love playing an old board game called Go[^], which is both stimulating and challenging. I play online with people all over the world. It's not that we don't have books - We have a nice library of books, so the issues isn't availability, it's just maybe some people are different? Or is it our culture, were information seems more important at times then books. With blogs, forums, and web chats, where the flow of information is more in flux and sometimes instantaneous, the average book can become quite out-dated? My 2-cents, Jeremiah
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ROTFL - I know what you mean. My daughter wanted 'one fish two fish red fish blue fish' so often, I can quote most of it. I find I can't get to sleep easily unless I read for a half hour, that's where most of my reading occurs. Watching TV or a computer is the worst thing you can do just before bed.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
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I perpetually read online (on any given day I read at least a couple hundred pages worth of text), but I haven't read a complete book (that is, more than a chapter here and there, or for reference, and excluding manuals/magazines/etc since I seldom read all of them) in at least 8 years (when I was in school and had required reading). I read some short stories 3 or 4 years ago from a couple compilations when I was bored at the house of someone that maintained a small personal library, but that was mainly because I didn't have a computer. I couldn't say with absolute certainty whether or not I've read a book in digital form in that time, because it wouldn't register as a book in my mind. Curiouser-still: I don't own a TV, which seems to amaze people more than the lack of books.
So, is the point about reading to be informed or just for pleasure or both? I guess I read to be informed, whether about technology, politics, religion, etc. I rarely read for pleasure, not much time?
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
How old are you? I would be willing to bet you were born ~before~ 1988. I know I read all of the time (born 1965) and so does my wife... but my kid's peers (circa 2000 and 2001) would rather play on their video games and watch TV and they have a short attention span. We are "forcing" our kids to read by having them sit and read as part of their homework for 30 minutes everyday... I don't know where this country is heading... but it is not a good place... we are one of the more illiterate, self-centered, in debt and morally bankrupt countries in the world. I pray that people start waking up and smell the coffee REAL SOON !
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Could it be that some people are just too busy to read? Take me for example, I go to school, work full time, have a wife and two kids. Plus there's the house duties, family (extended) duties, and the social life. Doesn't leave that much time for reading? Then there's other interests? I love playing an old board game called Go[^], which is both stimulating and challenging. I play online with people all over the world. It's not that we don't have books - We have a nice library of books, so the issues isn't availability, it's just maybe some people are different? Or is it our culture, were information seems more important at times then books. With blogs, forums, and web chats, where the flow of information is more in flux and sometimes instantaneous, the average book can become quite out-dated? My 2-cents, Jeremiah
People make the time to do whatever it is they want to do. You for example make the time to play "go", you make the time for your family and social life. Believe me if you really wanted to read, you would find the time, just like you find the time to play "go"
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Most people I know just don't read, or if they do, they read mind numbing best sellers. I generally read a book a week. That's actually way down from when I was a teenager, when I read 3 a week (when I had no life). I also read a bunch of magazines and online articles. It helps that I read very fast with full comprehension. Most of what I read is fiction, but not all of it. I read technical manuals, of course, and history. Every once in awhile I'll pick up something unusual, like a biography or a graphic novel. I tend not to discuss books with most of my friends, since barely 50% of them actually even read the news on a daily basis.
Is it that your friends can't read :) that you don't discuss books?
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Is it that your friends can't read :) that you don't discuss books?
It's not that they can't read, they just don't. They are a bunch of TV addicts, mostly much older than me (in their 50's and 60's). My friends my age (I'm 35) are too busy drinking, working, and playing video games. Of course, that's not all of my friends. Two of my friends are published writers (and I am as well), and one of them is actually an award winning writer, and they are both readers. My best friend and I discuss books all the time, though we like very different things. He's more a short story anthology person, and I'm more a novel person.
modified on Friday, January 18, 2008 11:05:24 AM
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I'm constantly reading. If I'm not eating lunch with someone (and I usually don't) I always have my nose in a book whilest consuming. Depending on the length of the books, I average 2 - 4 per month. Judy
I'm a fast reader. At an hour or two a day, I can go through 2-3 full-length novels per WEEK.
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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I am of the group who could not imagine living a single day with out having some good read along with me. I read on average 1 book per week in addition to the tech mags ect required to attempt to keep up with the software development field. I am 60 years old and still thirst for knowledge. I have a standing order with a friend of mine that says that if I ever phone him up and tell him that I learned nothing new today, he is to come over and shoot me.
When prediction serves as polemic, it nearly always fails. Our prefrontal lobes can probe the future only when they aren’t leashed by dogma. The worst enemy of agile anticipation is our human propensity for comfy self-delusion. David Brin Buddha Dave
David Lane wrote:
I have a standing order with a friend of mine that says that if I ever phone him up and tell him that I learned nothing new today, he is to come over and shoot me.
:) Yeah I feel that way as well. I was just thinking about this attitude the other day, I was saying how boring school was and how much I hated it and how I could have done grade 1 to 12 in about 2 actual solid years if given the chance. I found it excruciatingly boring and got only middling grades and was constantly sitting in the principles office for causing some kind of mayhem or another, all this at the exact same time that I was a library hound and reading topics on just about any subject they had books on. It's all due to my father who got me interested in the world before I was ever in school. He made it fun and interesting to learn about things, anything; school almost drummed that out of me but not quite. Once you have that attitude school is almost completely unnecessary beyond learning to read and write. Unecessary probably isn't a strong enough word, while it was great for socializing it was intellectually damaging at besst.
When everyone is a hero no one is a hero.
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David Lane wrote:
I have a standing order with a friend of mine that says that if I ever phone him up and tell him that I learned nothing new today, he is to come over and shoot me.
:) Yeah I feel that way as well. I was just thinking about this attitude the other day, I was saying how boring school was and how much I hated it and how I could have done grade 1 to 12 in about 2 actual solid years if given the chance. I found it excruciatingly boring and got only middling grades and was constantly sitting in the principles office for causing some kind of mayhem or another, all this at the exact same time that I was a library hound and reading topics on just about any subject they had books on. It's all due to my father who got me interested in the world before I was ever in school. He made it fun and interesting to learn about things, anything; school almost drummed that out of me but not quite. Once you have that attitude school is almost completely unnecessary beyond learning to read and write. Unecessary probably isn't a strong enough word, while it was great for socializing it was intellectually damaging at besst.
When everyone is a hero no one is a hero.
As the song say "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, its amazing I can think at all"
When prediction serves as polemic, it nearly always fails. Our prefrontal lobes can probe the future only when they aren’t leashed by dogma. The worst enemy of agile anticipation is our human propensity for comfy self-delusion. David Brin Buddha Dave
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
It's probably quite true that people don't read anymore. I know I read (or re-read) 2 - 4 books a week, while still squeezing in fun things like work, gym, karate, hiking, darts, pool, yard work, housecleaning, cooking, and good, healthy binge drinking. But I don't know anyone else who reads at all, most not even a newspaper. In fact, no woman I have ever dated had, at the time, read a book in the past ten years - not a slam on women, but it's easier to observe someone who's close than to expect honest answers from random questions put to strangers.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
I think it's a myth. It's possible that folks read fewer books in some places. As the Internet has over-taken a lot of peoples lives. Personally, I'm often teased about how much I read. I read while I walk to/from my car, to get coffee at the office, during lunch, in the bathroom, in bed, etc... Basically, any time I have a spare moment and an unread book I read. If I have access to the books I can easily read 2-5 books a week depending on their length. I do read mostly fiction, but I read a lot of technical books as well. My wife likes to say that I'll read anything that doesn't move fast enough :P Anyone who uses a treadmill has the time to read. :) Not having time isn't an excuse, it's just that you haven't found something that interests you enough to read it yet. :)
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Yeah, my favourite is people who argue in the soapbox and say 'your point is mute'. I guess it is, I mean they typed it, rather than say it, right ?
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
Christian Graus wrote:
Yeah, my favourite is people who argue in the soapbox and say 'your point is mute'.
I had a boss that used to say that all the time in meetings. It used to drive me up the wall. :mad:
WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.
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SimonRigby wrote:
I'm another member of the late night reading club
Same here. During the week, the only time I get to read for recreation is before I go to bed. Currently I'm reading Songs of Earth and Power[^] by Greg Bear. Not my usual cup of tea (I prefer hard science fiction), but it's been pretty good thus far.
Software Zen:
delete this;That's a fantastic book, as I remember.
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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I was reading a bit about why Stevo thinks the Kindle won't go anywhere: because no one reads (as opposed to the real reason - it sucks and it's a lame device). Which I thought was a typical ridiculous comment from Jobs until I googled for more information. And lo and behold, what I found seems to back him up! Some of the stats claim that, in the U.S. at least, 1 in 4 haven't read a book at ALL in the last year. There was a similar statistic quoted for the UK. Is this in fact true? I find I read 20+ books a year. Granted it's a lot of Sci-Fi, but still, to not read, at all? I can't even comprehend that.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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It's probably quite true that people don't read anymore. I know I read (or re-read) 2 - 4 books a week, while still squeezing in fun things like work, gym, karate, hiking, darts, pool, yard work, housecleaning, cooking, and good, healthy binge drinking. But I don't know anyone else who reads at all, most not even a newspaper. In fact, no woman I have ever dated had, at the time, read a book in the past ten years - not a slam on women, but it's easier to observe someone who's close than to expect honest answers from random questions put to strangers.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
It's probably quite true that people don't read anymore.
Although technically one might suppose that people aren't reading they certainly are buying. Some stats from "The Year's Best Science Fiction, 21st edition" (paraphrasing).... The best selling novel in 1975 sold 232,000 copies. The best selling novel in 2000 sold 2,875,000. In 1975 an estimated 39,000 titles were published. In 2000 114,487 titles were published. Personally I never even saw a book store until I was in my mid-teens despite living in the largest city in the state. There probably were some but certainly not close. The only access I had to books was libraries. Today I can't walk into a mall without seeing at least one store. And a non-trivial number of strip malls have either a chain store or some small shop owner trying to make a go at it.